Sunday, October 23, 2016

When
he was only seven years-old, Ben (Jonathan Patrick Moore) moved with
his family to the U.S. from Great Britain. What the young immigrant
liked best about his new home was his cute next-door neighbor, Ava
(Erin Bethea), an adorable, little girl exactly his age. The
two kids immediately forged a friendship that not only endured
through childhood but blossomed into romance once they hit puberty.
It even survived the separation which resulted when Ava went away to
college while her beau stuck around town, dividing his time between
driving a limo and interning at his father's architectural firm. Eventually,
Ben proposed and the lovebirds married, just like everybody who knew
them expected. They were eager to start a family, and became elated
to learn that Ava was expecting. Unfortunately, she would
subsequently suffer a miscarriage caused by a suspected tumor. Medical
tests ordered by her doctor (Terry O'Quinn) confirm the presence of a
malignancy. Consequently, the newlyweds suddenly find themselves
dealing with a dire diagnosis on the Cancer Ward instead of playing
with a bouncing bundle of joy on the Maternity Ward. That
is the sobering premise of New Life, a bittersweet
tale of undying love marking the directorial debut of actor Drew
Waters (Parkland). Ostensibly designed with Evangelicals in
mind, thefaith-based parable probably has
more of an appeal for the Christian crowd than for general audiences. To
its credit, the PG-rated production isn't all that heavy-handed in
terms of sermonizing. Still, its thinly-veiled
moralizing is ultimately undermined by that bummer of a development
which, quite frankly, proves to be irreversibly morose. Who goes to
the movies to get depressed?

No comments:

Subscribe via email

Subscribe via RSS

The Sly Fox Film Reviews

KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.